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Can I Really Speed Up My Metabolism?

Posted In: Fitness, Nutrition

There’s a limit to the number of calories you can cut.

Eating healthy is one way to cut calories, but it’s limited. You can only cut so much food from your diet before you start cutting important nutrients. That’s why it’s so important to boost your metabolism with exercise. The type of exercise you do makes a difference. HIIT—high intensity interval training—causes afterburn, which increases the calories you burn by as much as 15%. HIIT isn’t a particular exercise, but a way of doing exercises where you vary the intensity between high intensity and recovery.

The type of food you eat makes a difference, too.

Seriously, your metabolism responds to eating. If you starve yourself, it can slow your metabolism. That’s a natural body function to ensure there’s enough calories for important organs, like the brain. However, eating plenty of protein at every meal can boost it and provide the nutrition necessary for building muscles, too. Protein uses a higher amount of calories to digest, plus it keeps you feeling fuller longer.

Keep a bottle of tea or water with you all the time.

Lose the soft drink and grab a bottle of water. Just by doing that, you’ll cut the calories you consume and not affect your nutrition, either. However, when you drink water, it can also boost your metabolism for a short time. One study found that if you drink 17 oz of water, it can boost your metabolism by as much as 30% for an hour. Drinking it before a meal can help you feel fuller, so you eat less. Drinking green tea or oolong tea may increase the number of calories burned, as well. They contain phytochemicals that help boost fat burning when you exercise.

  • Some foods burn a lot of calories to digest, which may be close to as many calories as they contain. These are called thermogenic foods. Spicy foods like hot peppers, celery, cinnamon and black pepper are thermogenic foods.
  • If you’re going to drink water before a meal, make it ice-cold water. Cold water lowers the temperature of the body. It takes extra calories to warm it back up. That means boosting your metabolism.
  • You might not think that sleeping is a good way to boost calories, but sleep does keep your metabolic fires burning at full strength. It also keeps the satiety/hunger hormones aligned so you don’t overproduce hunger hormones.
  • Cut out the sugar! Sure you get a boost of energy, which might translate to burning more calories, or might not. However, after that burst of energy, there’s a rapid decline and you’ll be moving slower and burning fewer calories.

For more information, contact us today at Thrive Sauna Studio